As the rainy season approaches, an L.A. couple’s casual chat about the weather leads them across minefields of language, desire, and discontent to a place apart.
CHARLES
Lovely day.
JANEY turns on him.
JANEY
(Impatiently)
That’s cheating.
CHARLES
How so?
JANEY
A sly reference to . . . you know.
CHARLES
Mmmm. Cheating. Well . . .
(JANEY clutches to her chest the wooden
elephant she has been dusting.)
JANEY
Oh, please! Don’t!
CHARLES
What?
JANEY
You know. Talk about that. Please.
CHARLES
Oh, right. No. I won’t. I mean, assuming by “that” you
mean what I think you mean. I mean, I’ll make every effort
to, you know, avoid the subject. That one.
JANEY
Thanks.
CHARLES
No problem.
(Pause, during which JANEY resumes
dusting but casts a series of
distrustful glances at CHARLES.)
CHARLES
Do you really think we have no weather?
JANEY
(Sighing)
None worth talking about.
CHARLES
Ah. I see.
JANEY
(Doubtfully)
Do you?
CHARLES
But it does . . . change. I mean . . . occasionally.
JANEY
Very.
CHARLES
Changeable?
JANEY
Occasionally.
CHARLES
Sorry? It’s occasionally changeable, or it’s very
changeable? Or do you mean that on those occasions when it
is changeable it’s, well, very?
JANEY
Please. Talk about something else.
CHARLES
Except that.
JANEY
Right.
CHARLES
No, I mean “that.”
JANEY
Jesus, isn’t the world full of other topics?
CHARLES
No doubt. But am I?
JANEY
Apparently not.
A prize-winning poet and playwright, John Menaghan has published three books with Salmon Poetry (Ireland): All the Money in the World (1999), She Alone (2006), and What Vanishes (2009). Kirkus Reviews called All the Money in the World "an auspicious beginning," and...
Excerpt from The Hudson Review, Spring 2007
John Menaghan has published one of the best books of 2006. She Alone is a sort of novel in verse or fictional biography, but neither of those terms quite...
Performances: The Promenade Playhouse, Santa Monica, 2009; Empty Stage Theater, Los Angeles, September 2006. Staged Readings: Scripteasers, San Diego, November 2007; Women in Theater, Los Angeles, November 2005; ATHE Conference, San Francisco, July 2005; New Works Festival, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, April 2005